Monday, July 1, 2013

Is there is no end to the corruption that pervades this most "transparent" administration EVAH?

Homeland Security watchdog accused of whitewashing report


Posted By Brendan Bordelon On 8:21 PM 06/28/2013 In Daily Caller News Foundation


The man in charge of policing waste, fraud and abuse at the federal government’s third-largest department has been accused of suppressing a politically sensitive report, violating anti-nepotism laws and misusing agency resources, according to a letter from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security.

Charles Edwards, deputy inspector general at the Department of Homeland Security and de facto head of the office, was ordered by Missouri Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill and Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson to provide sixteen separate document sets related to the allegations by July 19.

“This is supposed to be the most transparent administration in history, but we’re seeing a real pattern of this White House and their secretaries applying pressure to inspectors general to whitewash reports,” Johnson said in an interview with The Daily Caller News Foundation.

The letter claims Edwards intentionally changed and withheld information from both the public and internal reports on the solicitation of prostitutes by U.S. Secret Service personnel in Cartagena, Colombia last year.
Johnson believes the suppression may have been done at the direction of political appointees at the Department of Homeland Security, raising doubts about the office’s independence from the agency it’s tasked with investigating.

Numerous other allegations came from over a dozen current or former employees and vary widely. Whistle-blowers claim that Edwards illegally employed his wife as an auditor within his office, obtaining improper benefits for her in the process.

In one instance, Edwards reportedly pressured subordinates to approve his wife’s seven-month teleworking stint in India and provided a government-issued Blackberry cellphone for her personal use while abroad.

He also stands accused of misusing federal funds by traveling regularly to Fort Lauderdale, Florida under the guise of conducting routine inspections of a local inspector general’s office. In reality, whistle-blowers allege that Edwards was attending Ph. D classes at Nova Southeastern University, billing airline tickets, car rentals and hotel fees to the federal government.

There have also been allegations that Edwards used government-issued vehicles to run personal errands and retaliated against employees who questioned his activities by placing them on administrative leave.

The government accountability group Cause of Action informed TheDC News Foundation that they have been investigating the inspector general for over a year.

“Cause of Action has been made aware, through DHS insiders, that Edwards potentially destroyed complaints filed by his own employees,” said Dan Epstein, Cause of Action’s executive director. “If this allegation proves to be true, Edwards could be facing time in prison.”

The Department of Homeland Security has been without a Senate-confirmed inspector general since February 2011. Charles Edwards assumed leadership of the office as acting inspector general at that time, but was forced by the Federal Vacancies Act to return to his position as Deputy inspector general in January of this year.

The Obama administration nominated Roslyn Mazer to be inspector general in July 2011, but she withdrew her nomination in June 2012 following a contentious confirmation hearing. The administration has yet to name a replacement nominee.

“This administration has a history of not filling inspector general positions,” Johnson said, pointing to vacancies at the Departments of State, Interior, Labor and Defense. “Those departments represent more than 50 percent of federal discretionary spending, and they’re all without a full-time inspector general.”

Johnson emphasized that his committee was committed to discovering the truth behind the explosive allegations. “The fact that the chairwoman [Sen. McCaskill] joined in our request for information shows how seriously we’re taking this,” he said.

“We’re looking forward to his prompt response to our request for information,” the senator concluded.
Follow Brendan on Twitter

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

May God forgive us

FRONT PAGE CONTRIBUTOR
We Must Stand Witness
By: Thomas Crown (Diary)  |  June 26th, 2013 at 04:15 PM  
On Tuesday night, a flown-in rent-a-mob screamed, jeered, and overrode ordinary small-r republican governance in Texas in order to make sure that viable children in utero, 20 weeks old and older, could still be killed on their mothers’ say-so. They also opposed efforts to make it so that a woman receiving an abortion did so in a clean medical facility, because a lot of abortionists don’t run those.

They stood with Kermit Gosnell and Douglas Karpen, the doctors who, respectively, are in jail for murdering children of the same age and in horrible unsanitary conditions, and likely soon will be. And they were cheered on almost unanimously by print and television media.
Mollie Hemingway has a wonderful writeup on this, but I wanted to add a part. Because you see, we as Americans allow this madness — mobs running over governance, children being butchered — and I feel it is important to explain exactly what is at stake here.
I do this not because it will change a single mind. If you support abortion at 20 weeks and after — when the baby looks like what it is, a baby — then nothing I say will persuade you. I do this because we must bear witness to what we allow to be done, and we pay for the products and services made by those who cheer it on.
This is about the brutal murder of a child, in a way that were it done to a rabbit would end with the killer in prison. It is a murder because the person actually doing it knows he is cutting up another human being and does so without any pang of conscience — with, if you will excuse the phrase, a cold and abandoned heart.
A baby at 20 weeks may or may not feel pain. However, as Ben Domenech’s excellent Transom notes, she does know her own mother’s voice. She responds to it as the most common sound in the womb. She turns to it. Her brain waves and heart rate all change when she hears it. It is the most familiar and comfortable outside stimulus in her little world.
An abortion of this little girl works like this:
If you could see her baby, which is quite easy on an ultrasound, she would be as long as your hand plus a half from the top of her head to the bottom of her rump not counting the legs. Your patient has been feeling her baby kick for the last 2 months or more but now she is asleep on an operating room table and you are there to help her with her problem pregnancy.
The first task is remove the laminaria that had earlier been placed in the cervix to dilate it sufficiently to allow the procedure you are about to perform. With that accomplished, direct your attention to the surgical instruments arranged on a small table to your right. The first instrument you reach for is a 14-French suction catheter. It is clear plastic and about nine inches long. It has a bore through the center approximately ¾ of an inch in diameter.Picture yourself introducing this catheter through the cervix and instructing the circulating nurse to turn on the suction machine which is connected through clear plastic tubing to the catheter. What you will see is a pale yellow fluid that looks a lot like urine coming through the catheter into a glass bottle on the suction machine. This is the amniotic fluid that surrounded the baby to protect her.
With suction complete, look for your Sopher clamp. This instrument is about thirteen inches long and made of stainless steel. At the end are located jaws about 2 ½ inches long and about ¾ of an inch wide with rows of sharp ridges or teeth. This instrument is for grasping and crushing tissue. When it gets hold of something, it does not let go. A second trimester D&E abortion is a blind procedure. The baby can be in any orientation or position inside the uterus. Picture yourself reaching in with the Sopher clamp and grasping anything you can.
At twenty-four weeks gestation, the uterus is thin and soft so be careful not to perforate or puncture the walls. Once you have grasped something inside, squeeze on the clamp to set the jaws and pull hard–really hard. You feel something let go and out pops  a fully formed leg about six inches long. Reach in again and grasp whatever you can. Set the jaw and pull really hard once again and out pops an arm about the same length. Reach in again and again with that clamp and tear out the spine, intestines, heart and lungs.
The toughest part of a D&E abortion is extracting the baby’s head. The head of a baby that age is about the size of a large plum and is now free floating inside the uterine cavity. You can be pretty sure you have hold of it if the Sopher clamp is spread about as far as your fingers will allow. You will know you have it right when you crush d own on the clamp and see white gelatinous material coming through the cervix. That was the baby’s brains. You can then extract the skull pieces. Many times a little face will come out and stare back at you.
Let me summarize that for you: the baby sits there, safe and warm because she has never been anything else, waiting for the next instant when she will hear her mother’s voice. She is then punctured, torn, sliced, and slashed to death, her body ripped to shreds where before all she ever felt was comfort and sleep.
She is still waiting for her mother’s voice as her brains are ripped from her body.
An adult who did this to a cockroach would be considered too ill to be allowed to run free. (A child who did it would also be hospitalized.) To do it to a puppy would end with prison time.
But if you do this, if this is your livelihood, if you will stand and talk in the Texas Legislature to make sure that baby can be torn apart waiting for one last moment of her mother’s voice, then Texas Monthly, the Washington Post, and every major news organization want to give you a medal.
And we allow this. We encourage it. We reward it.
We have reached a point as a country where seventy to eighty percent of us are horrified by this, and yet our media and governing classes (but I repeat myself) rush to preserve it, and we yawn. (If you think the Republican caucus leadership in the Texas House and Senate weren’t complicit in the bill’s demise, you aren’t paying attention.) We vote for them, we watch their news programs, we go on their shows and act like they think we’re human, we reward them by treating them with dignity.
If we had a bare modicum of decency, people who differ with supermajorities in this country on whether a baby can be torn apart as she waits for her mother’s voice would not be welcome in our homes, our lives, or our conversations. They would be cast from our politics and in an ideal world, our country.
But conservatives (and libertarians who don’t understand that liberals suspect they’re conservatives) will go right on going along, hoping it will all change.
It won’t.
And we are at fault.

I'm so glad I'm on the same side as Michelle...she can truly right any wrong and put any liberal in his/her place with her artful writing, her wit, and her incredible intelligence

Played out: The liberal racists’ “Uncle Tom” card

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By Michelle Malkin  •  June 26, 2013 09:23 AM
 

Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2013

Meet Ryan Patrick Winkler. He’s a 37-year-old liberal Minnesota state legislator with a B.A. in history from Harvard University and a J.D. from the University of Minnesota Law School. He’s also a coward, a bigot, a liar and a textbook example of plantation progressivism.

On Tuesday, Winkler took to Twitter to rant about the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down an onerous section of the Voting Rights Act. The 5-4 ruling overturned an unconstitutional requirement that states win federal preclearance approval of any changes to their election laws and procedures. Winkler fumed: “VRA majority is four accomplices to race discrimination and one Uncle Thomas.”

This Ivy League-trained public official and attorney relied on smug bigotry to make his case against a Supreme Court justice who happens to be black. “Uncle Thomas” wasn’t a typo. Denigration was the goal, not an accident. It was a knowing, deliberate smear.

After being called out by conservative social media users for his cheap attack on Clarence Thomas, Winkler then revealed his true color: yellow. He deleted the tweet (captured for posterity at my Twitter curation site, twitchy.com) and pleaded ignorance.

“I did not understand ‘Uncle Tom’ as a racist term, and there seems to be some debate about it. I do apologize for it, however,” he sniveled. “I didn’t think it was offensive to suggest that Justice Thomas should be even more concerned about racial discrimination than colleagues,” he protested.

Holding a black man to a different intellectual standard based on his skin color. Accusing a non-white conservative of collectivist race traitorism. Employing one of the most infamous, overused epithets against minority conservatives in the Democratic lexicon. “Apologizing,” but disclaiming responsibility. Sorry … that he got caught.

Just another day at the left-wing racist office.

Rabid liberal elitists expect and demand that we swallow their left-wing political orthodoxy whole and never question. When we don’t yield, their racist and sexist diatribes against us are unmatched. My IQ, free will, skin color, eye shape, name, authenticity and integrity have been routinely ridiculed or questioned for more than two decades because I happen to be an unapologetic brown female free-market conservative. My Twitter account biography jokingly includes the moniker “Oriental Auntie-Tom” — just one of thousands of slurs hurled at me by libs allergic to diversity of thought — for a reason. It’s a way to hold up an unflinching mirror at the holier-than-thou NoH8 haters and laugh.

We conservatives “of color” are way past anger about the Uncle Tom/Aunt Tomasina attacks. We’re reviled by the left for our “betrayal” of our supposed tribes — accused of being Uncle Toms, Aunt Tomasinas, House N*ggas, puppets of the White Man, Oreos, Sambos, lawn jockeys, coconuts, bananas, sellouts and whores. This is how the left’s racial and ethnic tribalists have always rolled. But their insults are not bullets. They are badges of honor. The Uncle Tom card has been played out.

Of course Winkler didn’t think it was offensive. Smarty-pants liberal racists never think they’re being racist. In their own sanctimonious minds, progressives of pallor can never be guilty of bigotry toward minority conservatives. Ignorance is strength. Slurs are compliments. Intolerance is tolerance.

And when all else fails, left-wing prejudice is always just a well-intended joke. (PBS commentator Julianne Malveaux’s death wish for Justice Thomas set the standard: “I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies early like many black men do, of heart disease. … He is an absolutely reprehensible person.”)

Back in her day, before the advent of democratizing social media, Malveaux and her elitist PBS friends could get away with such vile bile. But liberal crabs in the bucket, viciously trying to drag dissenters “of color” down, can no longer engage in hit-and-run with impunity. Conservatives on Twitter have changed the dynamic in an underappreciated, revolutionary way. The pushback against liberal political bigotry is bigger, stronger and swifter than it’s ever been.

You can delete, but you cannot hide.
 

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

What jihad has cost Americans


by Guy Rodgers
Executive Director

Perhaps you’ve noticed. Every time there’s a jihadist attack, whether foiled or successful, government leaders, media mouthpieces, Muslim Brotherhood front organizations, and academic apologists bend over backwards urging us not to rush to judgment.

They collectively decry “Islamophobia” and wring their hands in fear for all the Muslims who will now be persecuted by “bigoted” Americans.

It’s so predictable, it’s like watching a bad remake of the movie “Groundhog Day.”

Perhaps you’ve also noticed that the alleged bigoted wave of Muslim persecution never comes. If it did, it would be front page news all over America.

What you won’t find on the front page news is the horrific cost in lives, money, and freedom, that America specifically, and the West generally, has paid—and continues to pay—thanks to the rising tide of global Islamic jihad.

Most of us have some awareness of the cost in lives, from 9/11 to Ft. Hood to the Boston Marathon bombings.

The direct cost in dollars is tougher to calculate. Since its creation we’ve spent over $400 billion for the Department of Homeland Security. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost close to $1.5 trillion. Throw in the creation of the TSA; extra costs for security at every level of society; the costs for Guantanamo Bay and every prosecution of every Islamic terrorist; and I’d estimate we’re conservatively talking about $2.5 trillion since 9/11.

We’re paying that with our taxes and the national debt we’re piling on our children and grandchildren.

What’s more, as soon as a jihadist blows up something at one of our ports we’ll have to implement heightened security and screening measures not now in place. Ka-ching.

And all these costs don’t include the indirect cost in dollars due to the recession after 9/11. Hundreds of billions? Who knows? I know my IRA took a huge hit after 9/11.

But what about the intangible costs we’ve incurred? The costs in loss of freedom, rising fear, and impositions on our way of life?

  • Onerous shakedowns, pat-downs, put-downs, and invasive imaging at airport security.
  • Extra time we have to allow to go through long security lines at airports.
  • Watching the TSA agent throw away your expensive bottle of perfume you forgot was in your carry-on bag.
  • Explosion of public surveillance cameras.
  • Extra time we have to allow when attending any public event where security is considered necessary (such as sporting events).
  • Fear of going to public events.
  • That knot in our stomachs when we see an abandoned backpack in a public place.
  • The time law enforcement has to spend preventing terrorism and tracking down terrorists—time that takes them away from keeping us safe from murderers, rapists, thieves and vandals.
  • Bag searches at theme parks like Disney World.
  • Endless intimidation tactics, such as the persecution of free speech, name calling and threats (“Islamophobe,” “racist,” “bigot,” etc., etc.). I’m thinking of that wonderful teacher in Concrete, Washington, whose reputation has been smeared by CAIR-Washington because she dared to tell the truth about the Taliban and Hamas.
  • Government intimidation, such as reported instances where government agents (e.g., police), have shown up at people’s homes to question them after complaints of “Islamophobia.” I wonder how many burglaries occurred while those police were busy interrogating innocent people?
  • Messing with the minds of our children and grandchildren thanks to biased and inaccurate public school textbooks.
  • Heightened security precautions for every person or organization that speaks out against the threat of radical Islam. For instance, some of our chapter leaders use pen names. Brigitte Gabriel has been the target of death threats.
  • Government surveillance of our websites and blog sites.
  • The NSA (National Security Agency) collecting phone records nationwide. The justification for this, and it’s understandable even if disconcerting, is the terrorist threat to our national security. No terrorist threat, no phone records seizure.
  • Banking and financial regulations that impose often unseen burdens on our ability to engage in financial transactions. One group of nuns actually had their bank account frozen because they were suspected of terrorism. Why? One of the nuns didn’t have her Social Security number and photo ID on the account!

In short, the entire fabric of American society has been dramatically altered by the rising tide of global Islamic jihad. There is no aspect of our lives that hasn’t been negatively impacted by this. We have less privacy, less freedom, more cost, more fear—the inevitable consequence of jihadist terror.

And the jihadists know this. They know their actions are negatively impacting our lives. It’s part of their strategy to break our will.

I’m not saying Islamic jihad is the only threat that has spawned all of these changes to our lives. But clearly, it’s the most predominant, by far.

As I assess the incredible price we’re paying for jihad, I’ve grown weary of hearing how Muslims are being inconvenienced or feel uncomfortable or feel like their rights are being infringed upon.

Join the club. Every time I have to virtually undress at the airport, I feel violated and my rights infringed upon.

I’ve lost patience with the complaining about how bad Muslims are being treated in America, about the price they’re paying.

We’re ALL paying a price. Where’s the sympathy and empathy for us non-Muslims who didn’t ask for this?

To the degree that Muslims are suffering repercussions, they’re paying a price for the actions of other Muslims. If they really want things to change, they can do something about it by going to the heart of the problem and standing up to the stealth and violent jihadists in their midst, including their leaders.

Stop screaming “Islamophobia” and start exposing all the hate-filled, violent and jihadist literature in the majority of mosques in America.

Join together with reformist Muslims and organizations who are confronting the Muslim Brotherhood and its alphabet soup of legacy organizations in America (CAIR, ISNA, MAS, MPAC, MSA, IIIT, NAIT, etc., etc., etc.).

Start asking why historically open and tolerant countries like the Netherlands, who welcomed Muslim immigration for decades, are now experiencing a growing citizen pushback against that immigration.

Start putting yourselves in the shoes of us non-Muslims. We’re paying a hefty price for something we didn’t ask for and we didn’t deserve.

And please, no more lectures about how supposedly “intolerant” Americans are. It’s a remarkable commentary on the goodness and tolerance of Americans when you consider the enormous price we’ve paid thanks to jihad, which we’ve shouldered virtually without retaliation against the Muslim community.

So the next time someone complains to you about the price Muslims are paying, however that price is defined, nod your head and say “I hear you. Have you ever calculated the price non-Muslims are paying because of global Islamic jihad?”

And then spell it out for them.

Who knows? You might change a few minds along the way.

Yours for a safe and free America,


Guy Rodgers

Sunday, June 23, 2013

Someday when all is known about this fraud president, I'll return to this post and laugh at the naiveté of the American people.

Oops: Yahoo! News Accidentally Correctly Refers to Kenya as Obama’s 'Country of Birth'

Leah Barkoukis | Jun 23, 2013


President Obama and his family are about to embark on a weeklong trip to Africa this week, which includes stops in Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania. The trip has garnered significant media attention—not because of the president’s agenda while there—but for its excessive cost, which some say could range from $60 to $100 million. 
Yahoo! News’ story on the cost of Obama’s trip is drawing attention for others reasons, however.
Things got pretty awkward for news website, Yahoo! News, afteran article published by a White House reporterFriday called Kenya President Obama’s ‘country of birth.’
The article, written by Rachel Rose Hartman, spoke of the Obama family’s upcoming visit to Africa, which is expected to take place on June 26th to July 3rd. Hartman mentioned that the President will not be stopping in his country of birth which — apparently to the writer — is Kenya. […]
Yahoo! News later issued a correction to the article, stating that the story had mistakenly identified the president’s country of birth. And in an attempt to remedy the situation, the website changed the statement from saying the president’s ‘country of birth’ to his ‘ancestral homeland’, which admittedly is not much better.
Meanwhile, Kenyans are actually really upset the president will be not be stopping over in his, er, “ancestral homeland,” and have taken to Twitter with the hashtag #WhyObamaWillSkipKenya to criticize the decision.
Ben Rhodes, deputy national security advisor for strategic communications, told reporters on Friday that it’s just not the best time for the president to visit, even though he still has a “deep, personal, familial connection to Kenya.”
Part of that bad timing is likely due to the March election of Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta who happens to face crimes against humanity charges at the International Criminal Court, a process the U.S. supports. […]
Kenya's current leader has a justice problem. Kenyatta is charged with crimes against humanity, including rape and murder, and orchestrating violence after the 2007 election, a charge he denies. The ICC lists him as an "indirect co-perpetrator" in the chaos that killed some 1,200 people and displaced more than 500,000 after the disputed elections, which he won against then-Prime Minister Raila Odinga by 50.07 percent to 43.28 percent.
"The Kenyan people hold a special place in the president's heart," Rhodes told reporters on the conference call. "We respect the sovereign right of Kenyans to choose their leaders ... We also as a country have a commitment to accountability and justice."

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Elbert Guillory: Why I Chose To Become A Republican

Louisiana State Senator Elbert Guillory (R-Opelousas) explains why he recently switched from the Democrat Party to the Republican Party. He discusses the history of the Republican Party, founded as an Abolitionist Movement in 1854. Guillory talks about how the welfare state is only a mechanism for politicians to control the black community.
Hello, my name is Elbert Lee Guillory, and I’m the senator for the twenty-fourth district right here in beautiful Louisiana. Recently I made what many are referring to as a ‘bold decision’ to switch my party affiliation to the Republican Party. I wanted to take a moment to explain why I became a Republican, and also to explain why I don’t think it was a bold decision at all. It is the right decision — not only for me — but for all my brothers and sisters in the black community.

You see, in recent history the Democrat Party has created the illusion that their agenda and their policies are what’s best for black people. Somehow it’s been forgotten that the Republican Party was founded in 1854 as an abolitionist movement with one simple creed: that slavery is a violation of the rights of man.

Frederick Douglass called Republicans the ‘Party of freedom and progress,’ and the first Republican president was Abraham Lincoln, the author of the Emancipation Proclamation. It was the Republicans in Congress who authored the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments giving former slaves citizenship, voting rights, and due process of law.

The Democrats on the other hand were the Party of Jim Crow. It was Democrats who defended the rights of slave owners. It was the Republican President Dwight Eisenhower who championed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, but it was Democrats in the Senate who filibustered the bill.

You see, at the heart of liberalism is the idea that only a great and powerful big government can be the benefactor of social justice for all Americans. But the left is only concerned with one thing — control. And they disguise this control as charity. Programs such as welfare, food stamps, these programs aren’t designed to lift black Americans out of poverty, they were always intended as a mechanism for politicians to control black the black community.

The idea that blacks, or anyone for that matter, need the the government to get ahead in life is despicable. And even more important, this idea is a failure. Our communities are just as poor as they’ve always been. Our schools continue to fail children. Our prisons are filled with young black men who should be at home being fathers. Our self-initiative and our self-reliance have been sacrificed in exchange for allegiance to our overseers who control us by making us dependent on them.

Sometimes I wonder if the word freedom is tossed around so frequently in our society that it has become a cliché.

The idea of freedom is complex and it is all-encompassing. It’s the idea that the economy must remain free of government persuasion. It’s the idea that the press must operate without government intrusion. And it’s the idea that the emails and phone records of Americans should remain free from government search and seizure. It’s the idea that parents must be the decision makers in regards to their children's education — not some government bureaucrat.

But most importantly, it is the idea that the individual must be free to pursue his or her own happiness free from government dependence and free from government control. Because to be truly free is to be reliant on no one other than the author of our destiny. These are the ideas at the core of the Republican Party, and it is why I am a Republican.

So my brothers and sisters of the American community, please join with me today in abandoning the government plantation and the Party of disappointment. So that we may all echo the words of one Republican leader who famously said, ‘free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we are free at last.’